Nvidia is not showing Tegra 3 phones on its booth but just a few hundred feet from their booth, Fujistu decided to showcase a Tegra 3 phone with Raptide GP THD game.

You can tell by the splash effects that the phone does have a Tegra 3 chip, as these splash effect only work on quad core Tegra 3. The girl next to the phone told us that it’s a 1.2GHz clocked chip and the spec sheet next to the device confirms it.

The phone is water and dust proof, has a 4.6 inch high quality liquid crystal screen, and a 13.1 Megapixel high sensitivity camera (ISO 25600). The specs claim the phone is LTE compatible and due its 1.2GHz clock, it should be quite fast.

Unfortunately the phone is for the Japanese market, and we were not allowed to touch the demo. However, the nice girl that was guarding the phone said that we'll have a chance to play with it in about two months at Barcelona Mobile World congress.

Fujitsu Tegra 3 phone should launch this summer in Japan, but there are no direct plans to launch it in Europe or USA as of yet. At least we know that Tegra 3 phones are real but HTC might be the first to launch at MWC late February 2012.

We had a chance to talk with two top guys from Nvidia - General manager of Tegra Mike Rayfield as well as General manager of Mobile group Rene Haas. We wanted to see what these guys expect from 2012 and the mobile market.

Mike Rayfield said he believes that for the first half of 2012, Tegra will rely on the 40nm process. Both chaps are aware of the birth of 28nm process probably more than any of us, but when the Kal El, Tegra 3, was in its design phase, the 28nm process was not available.

Naturally, Nvidia wants to get to 28nm and launch its next generation Wayne chip as soon as it can, but it probably won't get to that point until late 2012 or early next year. Nvidia believes that it has a good chance with Tegra 3 against Qualcomm quad core and OMAP 5, but we will get to that at some other time.

Rayfeild also confirmed more design wins with Tegra 3 than with Tegra 2.

Asus' latest Transformer tablet, the quad-core Transformer Prime, has finally showed its face in some real reviews and although there are a couple of glitches, the Tegra 3, high-quality build and a good screen certainly make this one the best tablets around.

As you probably already know, the Asus Transformer Prime is based on a 1.3GHz quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3, aka Kal-El chip, has 1GB of memory and 32/64GB of storage, all packed behind a 10.1-inch 1280x800 Super IPS+ screen. The device measures 263x180.8x8.3mm and weighs 586g, which makes it a tad bit thinner and lighter than the smaller 9.7-inch Apple iPad 2. It runs on Google's Android Honeycomb OS and packs quite a punch that puts it a tad ahead of Apple's iPad 2 in terms of performance.

Anandtech had some bad luck in recieving a broken sample and some other sites are also claiming issues with the browser performance and some battery issues, but in general you get a lot more for your money when you compare it to Apple's iPad 2. The build quality is exceptional, the screen is beautiful and most if not all reviews agree that Apple's iPad 2 finally got some decent competition. Of course, bear in mind that iPad 2 is almost nine months old and still looks pretty good.

According to what we know so far, the performance and battery issues should be fixed as there will be an OTA update on 2nd of December or tomorrow, and most of these reviews are dealing with pre-production samples. In case you were wondering about the price it stands at US $499 for the 32GB and US $599 for the 64GB version while the optional keyboard/battery dock adds US $149.99 to the price.

Back at Build conference, Microsoft didn’t only show Core i5 tablets and the rest of X86 based systems - they had a few machines based on ARM as well.

One of them was based on quad core Kal El Nvidia processor and you can see it live here. It runs quite smooth on this demo.

Another thing that Nvidia, a few VPs we talked to recently as well as Microsoft want to point out is that ARM won’t be for tablets only. There will be notebooks with keyboards and processors such as Kal El and they should not cost that much money either. One of them was demonstrated back at Computex 2011 here.

So the future of mobile computing are tablets, tablets with keyboards that you can detatch, such as Asus Transformer, or regular notebooks. This is at least a future painted with ARM architecture, and traditionally ARM solutions should end up cheaper than X86.

The real fight starts with the introduction of Window 8 but this will go down in late 2012.

We got a tip that Nvidia's CEO has gone on the record confirming that Kal El, Tegra 3 has more design wins than Tegra 2.

He also confirmed that the chip will be on the market before US holiday season and added:"this quarter (Q3 that ends with September 2011) or Q4 2011". Other industry sources are confirming that Kal El gets a lot of attention and we again confirmed that Asus Transformer 2 will be the first device to come with this quad core 40nm chip, the one that has better power consumption than Tegra 2.

Our sources claim that we should see Kal El in early Q4 2011, where October is the month to hope to see one in market. We also heard that the keyboard dock + battery should stay compatible from the original Asus Transformer power with Tegra 2, which is quite good news.

Jensen also said that he sees Tegra business a a 1 billion dollar business for Nvidia in 2012, which will definitely make some nice money to Nvidia, much more than just to fill the void that was left when Nvidia left out the chipset business.

The guys from Heise.de managed to get their hands on an updated Nvidia roadmap shown during the Citi Technology Conference that has two new SoC chips that weren't there before, the Kal-El+ and Grey.

Although the precise details regarding these two chips are still unknown, there has been quite a few good educated guesses. Since Nvidia plans to get a piece of notebook space once Windows 8 comes out it is logical to assume that Kal-El+ might just be a chip for it. The Kal-El+ is scheduled to show up sometimes in mid-2012 and be a chip that should hold Tegra afloat 'till Wayne arrives, sometimes in the end of 2012.

The second new chip is the Grey, a Tegra+Icera SoC chip that, according to the roadmap, targets mostly smartphone market. It will most likely be made using 28nm manufacturing process and will feature 2G/3G/4G communication capabilities, something that Tegra has been lacking. Of course, Grey SoC comes in 2013, and could end up to be a cut down version of the Wayne chip in order to accommodate the cheaper smartphone market.

It was supposed to show its face in August, but now it is crystal clear that Kal El has been slightly delayed for at least month or a bit more.

We got a confirmation from a multiple sources that first tablet based on a new quad core 40nm Tegra chip, codenamed Kal El is going to show its face inside of the Asus Transformer 2 tablet.

Asus transformer based on Tegra 2 was quite popular device as many users really liked the combination of a keyboard dock with an extra battery and a thin Tegra 2 tablet.

Jen Hsun Huang, Nvidia CEO said at the last conference call that despite its four cores, Kal El consumes less power than Tegra 2, and this is the case across the board in just about any work scenario. This is a huge step forward for Nvidia and Jensen also said that there are many companies who are currently working on Kal El designs.

There will be many tablets and at later date, most likely in Q1 2012, we will see phones based on quad core Kal El. According to Nvidia's Tegra roadmap, Kal El should have better computational power than Core 2 Duo.

We can remember that Nvidia was persistent at the Kal El announcement that the devices will hit retail as soon as August. Our Far East sources are quite confident that this won’t happen and that it will launch at later date, probably when it gets colder in the northern hemisphere.

Nvidia doesn’t want to talk about Kal-El, but it did release some basic specification back in January, but at this time, it is not ready to share more. Some more Tegra 2 devices will launch before the end of the year and Kal-El a chip that might end up as Tegra 3, should also come soon, just not in August.

Different sources suggested that Kal-El definitely comes in Q3 2011 that for the normal world ends with September 30th, but have in mind that Nvidia’s Q3 ends more month later. This can give us some ideas about the latest possible launch date. One thing is certain, the launch date should happen much before Thanksgiving and the rest of the shopping spree to follow.

This week has definitely been kind to us when it comes to the future of phone / tablet chips. We have found out that Nvidia’s Kal El might be the only 40nm quad core in the market.

The rest of the phone elite will wait for 28nm to do the quad core, as the thermals go down significantly and two Cortex A15 cores can end up faster than four Cortex A9 40 / 45nm cores. So far Texas Instruments, Qualcomm and the rest of the phone / tablet chip manufacturers, including Samsung and Apple haven’t announced any Quad core Cortex A9 based 40 or 45nm quad chip.

Nvidia is expected to ship its Kal-El and have it in designs in Q3 2011 or this current quarter. Most of the big chip manufacturers will have to wait for 28nm to make its chip. Our sources have indicated that Kal-El might be the biggest chip for tablets / phones so far, as it ends significantly bigger than Tegra 2. Tegra 2 should be some 49 sq mm while Kal El was reported to be close to 80 sq mm.

Quad cores based on A15 should probably end up much closer to these 49 sq millimetre, but A15 28nm Quads will only ship at some point of 2012, most likely the second part of it. TI already said it will only happen with retail present of actually products in fall 2012 for OMAP 5.

Looks like Nvidia will be only quad core mobile solution in town for 2011 and at least some manufacturers will have devices available before this Thanksgiving and Xmas.

We just had a nice chat with some chaps from Texas Instruments, the people behind the highly successful OMAP architecture, and we can tell you that 28nm can be very interesting for tablets and phones.

Unfortunately for consumers, 28nm comes only in 2012, for most companies in the latter part of next year, but it will get ARM chips quite a significant performance boost. We just heard that two new ARM 15 cores are fast enough to beat quad-cores based on the current A9 design. This means that a dual ARM A15 chip can beat Tegra 3, aka Kal-El, a 40nm quad-core solution. Kal-El is expected in Q3 2011, in August / September timeframe and it will be a while until you see 28nm ARM chips in actual products, which should appear roughly a year later.

This kind of performance will probably put a lot of pressure on Intel and AMD, companies who traditionally don’t know how to make chips that deliver ultra low power consumption, and it doesn’t stop there. In 2013 you can expect some 20nm chips to continue the transition.

Bear in mind that in 2012 we will see Windows 8 as well as Ice Cream Sandwich, Google’s OS that units a phone and tablet OS. Ice Cream Sandwich might come very late 2011 and it is promised to make a huge difference in the way users interact with tablets, phones and similar devices.

Of course, by the time Omap 5 and ARM A15 comes out, Nvidia should have Wayne A15 based 28nm as well.

2012 seems to be quite interesting year for tablet wars, as 2011 just kindled things up.